By Soulskill from Slashdot's assimilation-complete department:suraj.sun sends word that Microsoft's acquisition of Skype for $8.5 billion has officially completed. Quoting:"Skype CEO Tony Bates will be named president of the new Skype Division of Microsoft, and will have to report directly to Steve Ballmer. In a post on the Official Microsoft Blog today, Bates seemed unsurprisingly enthusiastic about the acquisition, describing it as a marriage of two 'disruptive, innovative, software-oriented companies. Microsoft is committed to the ubiquity of the Skype experience – communication across every device and every platform will remain a primary focus,' Bates wrote. 'And we've only scratched the surface.'"

By samzenpus from Slashdot's secret-account department:holy_calamity writes "AT&T is adopting technology that gives a person with an Android device two user profiles, enabling company email and other data to reside in an encrypted partition separate from a user's apps, games and unfettered web browsing. AT&T is calling the feature Toggle, and plans to release it later this year. Toggle is a regular app that, once installed, creates its own encrypted desktop under the control of company IT bosses. Toggle is a rebranding of an app developed by startup Enterproid, which continues to develop its own version. AT&T think this move will encourage smartphone adoption in the enterprise. Interestingly, Apple's current version of iOS and app guidelines exclude multiple profiles on one device."

By samzenpus from Slashdot's bringing-the-cold department:DesScorp writes "Science News reports on a story which blames a centuries long cooling of Europe on the discovery of the new world. Scientists contend that the native depopulation and deforestation had a chilling effect on world-wide climate. 'Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University.' The story notes that the pandemics in the Americas were possibly an example of human climate manipulation predating the Industrial Revolution, though isotope measurements used during research have much uncertainty, so 'that evidence isn't conclusive.'"

By samzenpus from Slashdot's dial-S-for-shopping department:Fluffeh writes "Australian shopping centers will monitor customers' mobile phones to track how often they visit, which stores they like and how long they stay. One unnamed Queensland shopping center is next month due to become the first in the nation to install receivers that detect unique mobile phone radio frequency codes to pinpoint location within two meters."

By samzenpus from Slashdot's nothing-to-see-here-citizen department:wiredmikey writes "Air Force officials have revealed more details about a malware infection that impacted systems used to manage a feet of drones or UAVs at the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada as reported last week. According to the Air Force, the 24th Air Force (24th AF) first detected the malware – which they characterized as a 'credential stealer' as opposed to a keylogger as originally reported — and notified Creech Air Force Base officials Sept. 15 that malware was found on portable hard drives approved for transferring information between systems. The infected computers were part of the ground control system that supports remotely-piloted aircraft (RPA) operations. The malware is not designed to transmit data or video or corrupt any files, programs or data, according to the Air Force, which explained the infected computers were part of the ground control system that supports drone flight operations. The ground system is separate from the flight control system used by RPA pilots to fly the aircrafts."

By samzenpus from Slashdot's what-could-possibly-go-wrong? department:First time accepted submitter mphall21 writes "New York University scientists have developed artificial structures that can self-replicate, a process that has the potential to yield new types of materials. In the natural world, self-replication is ubiquitous in all living entities, but artificial self-replication has been elusive. The new discovery is the first steps toward a general process for self-replication of a wide variety of arbitrarily designed seeds."

By samzenpus from Slashdot's learn-in-person department:itwbennett writes "Facing budget problems, University of California officials and state analysts say that expanding online courses could help them 'innovate out of the current crisis.' But the lecturers whose jobs are at stake see it differently. Now the UC chapter of the American Federation of Teachers is fighting to block online courses."

By samzenpus from Slashdot's voice-in-the-machine department:hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: 'The advantage of using speech over other interaction paradigms is that we have honed its use over thousands of years. It is entirely natural for us to talk to one another. Talking is one of the first things we learn how to do as children. It's second nature for us to ask a colleague or a friend a question and for them to answer the same way. Being able to talk to a phone like it's a personal assistant is something that people are going to get very used to, very quickly. It's a much more natural approach than using a mouse on a desktop. And I highly doubt the impact is going to stop at phones.'"

By timothy from Slashdot's progress-still-in-progress department:yesakmac joins the teeming hordes of successful Slashdot submitters, with this excerpt from PC World that says the frenzied effort to port Android to HP's discontinued TouchPad has actually succeeded: "CyanogenMod also released a 'lower your expectations edition' release guide to let you know exactly what is working (or not) under the hood. Modders will be happy to know that basically all the TouchPad's guts are recognized. It supports dual-booting and fake SD cards in case you need to restore the TouchPad. What does not work, though, is the camera, which can only be used for video chat. Power efficiency is still an issue, too. As for the final build, CyanogenMod says they won't be giving a hard date, and that it will be ready when it is ready."

By timothy from Slashdot's vewwy-vewwy-quiet department:Riskable writes "Dan McDougall (full disclosure: That's me) just publicly released the source code to Gate One, which is an HTML5-powered terminal emulator and SSH client. It is unique in that it doesn't require any browser plugins (it uses WebSockets) and supports multiple simultaneous terminals/SSH sessions in a single browser tab. It can resume users' sessions after being disconnected, and supports both client and server-side session recording/playback (view as a log or like a video). Gate One can also be embedded into other web-based applications such as administration interfaces, serial port concentrators, virtual appliances, or whatever."